Tumblr outage blacks out millions of blogs

Tumblr outage blacks out millions of blogs

By Doug Gross, CNN

(CNN) – In a blow to hipster bloggers, budding photographers and oversharers everywhere, popular blogging platform Tumblr was down Friday morning.

The outage started in earnest shortly before 8:30 a.m. Friday, according to Web tool Down Right Now. Its report was based on official announcements and feeds, plus user reports on Twitter and directly to its creators.

On its Twitter feed, Tumblr had earlier acknowledged problems.

“We’re experiencing slow loading or intermittent errors on certain pages and are working quickly to restore performance,” read the post, from 7:34 a.m. ET.

Shortly before 10 a.m. ET, they updated: “Tumblr is experiencing network problems following an issue with one of our uplink providers. We will return to full service shortly.”

But roughly an hour later, the problems seemed more extreme. The wailing of the bloggerati was immediate and severe.

“First Pinterest, now Tumblr is down,” wrote user Greg Grigoriou, referring to an Amazon server outage that knocked out Pinterest, Reddit and other popular sites earlier this week. “Facebook and Twitter shake their heads at their bumbling redheaded stepchildren.”

However, a handful of users were apparently able to post links to Tumblr Friday without noting any problems.

Launched in 2007, the blogging and social site now hosts more than 77 million blogs. Alexa ranks Tumblr as the 36th most popular website in the world and 19th most-visited in the United States. It is particularly popular among younger Web users.